Felicity Huffman is nervous. The Golden Globes approach and the actress finds herself nominated for both Desperate Housewives and her memorable performance as pre-op transexual Bree in the indie film Transamerica. 'I'm not used to all this,' she says on the line from New York. 'After I speak to you, I'm going on Letterman. Suddenly I'm in this crazy world.' We discuss her performance in Transamerica, a brilliantly human portrait that never descends into camp or caricature. She 'stole a walk from here, a hand gesture from there and make-up tips from everywhere'. She also confesses she had to warm up her octave-lower voice every day. 'My husband [the actor William H Macy] refused to speak to me during the shoot.' I suggest perhaps it was a comfort to know he was turned off, rather than on, by her masculine tones. 'Oh my God, you're right,' she squeals. 'I must use this on Letterman tonight - I was worried I'd have nothing interesting to say, but now I do, so thank you.' Well how about that. I'll be gag writing for Richard & Judy next.

King swinger

While King Kong enjoyed box office success, a lovesick female gorilla at London Zoo had a miserable Christmas. The ape was one of several studied by the actor Andy Serkis before he filmed the part of Kong for Peter Jackson, becoming the model for the computer-generated images used in the blockbuster. He spent many hours with the gorillas, forming a special relationship with one female in particular. 'The apes got used to him and became very fond of him,' explained my man with the bananas. 'In fact, when he left for filming, we found their behaviour was altered and erratic. The female wouldn't talk to the other males at all because she missed her visits from Andy. I think she'd fallen a little bit in love with him.'

A mighty wind

Wong Kar Wai has been named Jury President for this year's 59th Cannes Film Festival. The director will pick the rest of his jury over the coming months but said last week that he and his colleagues would be sharing the dreams of the most gifted talents in world cinema. He added: 'There is an old Chinese saying: one can never expect the wind, but should always keep one's window open. Our goal will be to keep our windows open as wide as possible.' He may need to. According to festival president Gilles Jacob, Wong was chosen because of his films' 'plastic splendour and nostalgic amorous emotion in the great romantic tradition'. There'll be a lot of that about on the Croisette in May.

A sense of place

Distributors are highly inventive in their quest to please critics, even tailoring London screenings to specific venues. Brokeback Mountain was shown at the Soho Hotel where the seats are covered in cow skin. The Match Point premiere was held at the Curzon Mayfair because the cinema features in the film. And advance screenings of A Cock and Bull Story have been at the CFC screening room, the place the actors assemble to watch the first screening of their film within that film. Can't wait to see where they'll put us for I Am Cuba next week.